About HSCII
Who We Are
HSCII is a Canadian non-profit, based in Toronto. Our team is entirely volunteer: engineers, data scientists, and researchers working to improve how scientific knowledge is shared, understood, and preserved.
Why
Science is a continuous effort to describe and model the world around us. At any given time, even commonly accepted interpretations may be flawed. Confidence in truth comes from the interplay of evidence, dissent, and revision, not from a single result. But the systems researchers rely on to share and build on each other's work haven't kept up. Publishing is static, access is uneven, and the tools available don't reflect how research actually happens.
What We're Building
We're building open tools for academic search, collaboration, and publishing. Our first project, Search and Answer, works at the passage level across millions of academic resources to surface relevant material. Next is a research platform for iterative, version-controlled publishing with open community review. Everything we build is free for indpendents and open by default.
Our Mascot
Neptune, the farthest known planet from the Sun. We've only visited it once, in 1989. Most of what we know comes from a single flyby and a handful of telescope observations. It reminds us how much is still out there, barely seen, even within our own solar system.
Neptune Full Disk View, Voyager 2, 1989
Neptune Great Dark Spot, Voyager 2, 1989
Neptune's Rings, Voyager 2, 1989